With Lego Friends Like These, Who Needs Enemies?

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With Lego Friends Like These, Who Needs Enemies?

I'm no 'girly-girl,' and I never was. Even when I was young enough to be indoctrinated into the cult of gender segregation, I blew off the idea that girls and boys were too different to play well together and I have never regretted scoffing at that nonsense.

Sure, I had Barbies, but I played with them like any other action figures. My paper dolls were all astronauts, and the shoebox they lived in was as myriad and TARDIS-like on the inside as the imagination inside any child's head. I was faster and tougher than any boy on the playground, and if that sometimes made me unpopular with peers of all genders, well… Who needs friends when you've got Legos?

However, since the newest line of girly-girl Legos was released, the question I've been asking is, "With Lego Friends like these, who needs enemies?" Don't get me wrong, as an artist, I approve any time Lego expands their palette. Even when new colors come straight out of a Martha Stewart catalog. Too, as a lifetime Lego fan, I feel that life is just better with more bricks in it. But those 'Ladyfigs' have got to go.

What were they thinking?! Lego could have saved a lot of time, money, and headache. All they really needed to successfully target the female market was to advertise their product to boys and girls at the same time. The way that Legos were originally marketed. And if minifigs must be gendered (who needs gender when everyone has corners?), Lego could help us help their bottom line by designing minifigs that defy gender stereotypes. I'm as sick of super-macho mini-men as I am of those obnoxious floor-length, non-articulating block-skirts Lego gives their little women instead of legs.

I'm not the first to say any of this – I'm not even the first Geek Momto bring it up – and my rant may not be the most eloquent. For that, I direct you to Feminist Frequency, where Anita Sarkeesian provides a clear and complete picture of the gendering of Lego and offers some solutions to Lego's… bricky issues.